I mentioned the book The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold on this site and debate room before and didn’t seem to get a response. I wanted to know what any readers thought of it if they read it. The book seems to have gotten a lot of hot debates from believers, atheists and religious scholars alike. What are YOUR opinions?
I borrowed it from an Internet library, and quickly lost interest. The style and content of this book seems to have a lot in common with Erich von Daniken’s ancient astronaut books that claim an alien influence (in human affairs) in antiquity.
I did not read the whole book, so maybe I didn’t give it a fair shake . . . and maybe I’m wrong about certain assumptions that I made about the book, except that I didn’t see any really credible references from peer-reviewed journals.
To make such monumental claims, I would like to see better evidence.
And just so you know, I am not a Christian and I’m not sympathetic to organized religion as a whole.
For what it’s worth, I do believe that a Jesus existed, and that he was probably idealistic . . . and, perhaps, the first Reformed Rabbi.
However, in fairness to this book, I do acknowledge that it’s possible that Jesus never existed, and that there may have been a conspiracy to use a fabricated religion as a tool of political control.
As an example, in the late 1970s a house in Amityville, New York (in Long Island’s Suffolk County) was possessed by demons, and a family had to flee for their very souls about 28 days after they purchased this house.
The Amityville Horror has spawned–literally–70 plus movies, numerous books, and thousands of magazine articles and news commentary.
The kicker is that the Amityville Horror was a totally bullshit fabrication (dreamed up over “several bottles of wine” by a lawyer, a real-estate agent, and the Lutz family) that was cynically designed to provide a basis for a money-making book.
So . . . by some criteria, we have a conspiracy. We have the cynical con-artist bullshitters dreaming up the scam, we have the book publishers and movie-makers feeding into it (knowing, or–at least–strongly suspecting) that the whole story is bullshit, yet they feed into it and validate it to make money.
So now, there is a widespread belief that there is a portal to Hell that lies under the house, and the residents of Amityville have to contend with huge numbers of necromancers, self-appointed exorcists, theistic Satanists, Voodoo (actually called Voudun) priests, and “black witches” (whatever the hell they are) flooding the town. This also means that property values in the area have gone down, which must be irritating.
Residents of this beautiful, seaside town have had to become accustomed to finding animal remains in pentagrams, chicken blood smeared on public property, chanting rituals done at mdnight, and so forth.
My point in bringing up Amityville is that it is possible for scams to take on a life of their own, so surely this may be the case with Jesus Christ.
I just want high-quality evidence before accepting such an idea, and this book doesn’t provide it.
4 Likes
I think your Amityville example makes a strong point about how a story can grow into a widely accepted belief even when its original evidence is extremely weak. That said, I would be careful about applying the same standard directly to the historical question of Jesus, since there are ancient sources and scholarly debates that are quite different from a modern hoax. I agree, though, that extraordinary claims about Jesus being entirely fabricated require solid evidence, and it is reasonable to remain skeptical when a book relies more on speculation than on credible historical sources.
3 Likes
The Book of Mormon, there’s another con that is believed by hundreds of thousands, certainly more adherents than the divinity of Jesus in the first 2/3 of the first century.
Then we have Scientology, believed by the rich and influential and thousands of followers.
Neither of the above rely on credible sources anymore than the gospels and subsequent texts.
1 Like
Sadly, humans do not need a conspiracy to make up a bullshit supernatural story; those seem to be created spontanously.
2 Likes
I don’t know about the book itself but I used to subscribe to her newsletter which always seemed fairly levelheaded until 9/11 when she suddenly became a raving conspiracy theorist making claims about holes in [Pentagon] walls being too small for airliners to pass through 
.
I argued the point briefly with her, pointing out the prevailing view that the wings essentially collapsed on impact with a building that built, if you’ll pardon the proverbial, like a brick sh#thouse, folding back to allow the aircraft body to carry on through dragging the “folded back” wings after it and so creating a much smaller hole (I think I have that correct, I’m going on memory here). She wasn’t having it so I unsubscribed.
Suffice to say, it didn’t inspire confidence in her and so wouldn’t about anything else she’s written.
UK Atheist
1 Like
In case anyone is interested: a few years ago, I discussed one of the many failed attempts at modelling the WTC collapses from the “Architects and engineers for 9/11 truth” crowd over at metabunk.org (I’m the thread starter). Even their attempts at doing actual physics fail at the most basic level. See the linked thread for more details.
2 Likes
That stuff is very mathematical and I only have [a very old] GCE equivalent math i.e. CSE grade 1 and pre GCSE for those Brits familiar with such things. I mean, sure, I’ve learned a bit more since but it’s still very complex stuff for me. I scanned down it and couldn’t help but notice the photo of what was left of the towers… I genuinely thought there was nothing of that size left but hey ho.
UK Atheist
Actually guys and gals, a lot of very scholarly people had some very negative things to say about Acharya S and her book as it is filled with a lot of speculation instead of facts and evidence. My own thoughts are two: thai if Jesus existed, he was a heretic who would more than likely be thrown in prison instead of crucified. At least that’s what Roman law of the time would have had to say about him. But if he never really existed except as a conglomeration of many other “messiah’s” of other religions only on paper, then it would be “the greatest story ever sold.” But the final verdict is still out on that idea.
1 Like